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A group of climbers hung a giant upside down American flag from the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park on Saturday. The flag was displayed on the iconic 3,000 foot granite cliff as a protest against the recent wave of unwarranted firings of National Park Service workers, including eleven full-time employees of Yosemite National Park.
The protesters told the San Francisco Chronicle they wanted to peacefully draw attention to the fact that “public lands in the U.S. are under attack.” The inverted U.S. flag is considered a sign of distress or an imminent threat to the country.
Gavin Carpenter, a maintenance mechanic with Yosemite and disabled military veteran who supplied the flag and helped hang it on Saturday, told the Chronicle, “We’re bringing attention to what’s happening to the parks, which are every American’s properties. It’s super important we take care of them, and we’re losing people here, and it’s not sustainable if we want to keep the parks open.” The Trump administration has so far fired 1,000 National Park Service employees as part of its broad effort to downsize the federal government.
A particularly high number of visitors came to the park to see El Capitan on Saturday for a chance to witness the famous “firefall,” a phenomenon that only happens in late February when the evening sun hits the Horsetail Falls on the east side of El Capitan, optically transforming the falling water to look like fire.
“If the flag is for national parks, I am all for it,” said Joe Amaral, a visitor to the park from Las Vegas. “We have been to 32 national parks. We think they are short on resources as it is, and now you want to take away more. It isn’t right.”
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When I look at this poll, it shows that we need to have an uprising of people that say 'I didn’t vote for this.'”
